Brother Dirk and Other Stories

Chapter One: Arrested

"I still don't hear anything suspicious," the officer reported when he crept
back from the house. "Are you quite sure the Anabaptists are meeting
inside?"

"You said much the same the first time you listened at the door," snapped the
Dean of Ronse. He was a large man with a goatee and a double chin, with an
expensive gold chain around his neck. "What do you think an Anabaptist is
supposed to sound like?"

By the authority of the King of Spain, the Dean of Ronse, whose real name was Peter Tittlemans, was
Flanders' most active opponent of the Anabaptists. Dozens of the brothers had already been
executed because of him, and they called him the Inquisitor. As he bent down in front of the house to
plan his strategy, he listened again and seemed pleased.

"Someone is preaching," he announced. "Can't you see the lights of many candles through the
curtains? Get ready to follow me." The officers' fists tightened on their swords.

A minute later, the officers were bursting through the door. Almost as quickly, a tall man stood in
the entry way to meet them, with a younger man at his side. "Whom do you seek?" he asked quietly.

"Do you know Dirk Willems?" an officer demanded.

"Yes, I do," the man answered gently.

"Where is the rascal?"

"I myself am he," the man told them, after a pause.

The officers grabbed Dirk's arms and began to bind them, when suddenly the Dean shouted, "Fools!
Why do you delay? Where are the others?"

But while Dirk was speaking with the officers, the rest of the believers has hurried out the back door
and into the woods. The officers tied up the younger man, Hans Segers, and took them both to jail.

"Why didn't you watch the back door, as I told you?" the Dean growled at one of the officers. "What
do I pay you for?"